Coming to a shore near you: Kids dancing, singing, playing instruments on 110-foot boat
Tacomans are in for a maritime treat Saturday, May 18. That afternoon more than 60 students will perform on a boat at three viewing sites, with onlookers able to watch from the shore.
Dancers, a choir and a live student band playing original work will star in the program, “Rush of the Current.” Zach Varnell, co-director of the Partner Schools (SOTA/SAMI/IDEA), told The News Tribune via email that the 110-foot research vessel, the MV Doolin Rogers, was purchased with a Cheney Foundation grant and is owned by the Youth Marine Foundation.
The boat will head from point to point for three 30-minute shows.
The performance times, according to a show flyer, are:
1:15 p.m.: Thea’s Park, 535 Dock St.
2:15 p.m.: Owen Beach, 5605 Owen Beach Road.
3:15 p.m.: Browns Point Lighthouse, 201 Tulalip St. NE
The School of the Arts teamed up with the Youth Marine Foundation for the performance in the Port of Tacoma. Varnell later told The News Tribune during a phone interview that there has been an “ongoing, building relationship” between the port and Tacoma schools.
“What’s cool about this piece of performance art is that it highlights this partnership in Tacoma, which is: We have this incredible port with all these resources right at the center of our city on Thea Foss,” he said. “Giving students access to that by using the arts is a really cool way to showcase how that partnership is bringing kids closer and closer to all the opportunities that exist in the Port of Tacoma.”
Emily Wickman, School of the Arts’ choir director, told The News Tribune that she and two of her colleagues collaborated on the project. The trio wanted to present “performance art on the water.”
The concert tells a story about the environmental damage that humans inflict on the surrounding seas — and how when people aren’t around anymore, the ocean will thrive again.
“That’s one sort of tough take on the fate of the ocean, but essentially saying that nature is strong and resilient, and that we as humans do a lot of harm to our environment,” she said, “and hopefully, in a way that motivates folks to hear and listen and be inspired to do better and to do less harm.”
Even if the audience can’t hear every lyric from their spot on the shore, Wickman said, the students have definitely enjoyed the process. Attendees will get to see aquatic-themed creativity showcased “on a floating vessel right there in the space that it is advocating for.”
The student performers are definitely looking forward to it, she added. They haven’t ever done a school concert on a boat before.
“It feels exciting and novel,” Wickman said, chuckling. “And for them to have to reiterate to their parents, like, ‘No Mom, on Saturday morning, I have to be at class on a boat to sing rock songs about the ocean’ — I mean, that feels amazing.”
